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Ms Wallace, 51, found her sister in bed almost 24 hours later and raised the alarm. Ms Quinn was rushed to Chesterfield Royal Hospital on July 20, 2011.

Ms Wallace said: 'I had no idea what was going on, she was mumbling gibberish and not making any sense.

'It was almost like she was in a trance.'

Doctors told the family that they had never seen anything like this before and that Ms Quinn was incredibly lucky to be alive.

She had suffered a sudden subarachnoid brain haemorrhage cause by a ruptured aneurysm - a bulge in a blood vessel.Surgeons clipped her anuerysm to make it smaller two days after she was admitted and she had a bone flap temporarily removed in a craniotomy on July 23.

Pauline with her neurosurgeon Umang Patel who gave her a new lease of life

Sisters: Pauline with Janiece (l) before she was rushed to hospital. And today after she emerged from her vegetative state

Four months later in November Ms Quinnhad part of her skull replaced by a metal plate to relieve pressure on her brain.

By
this point her distraught family had given up hope of her recovering
after seeing little improvement and had started looking for residential
homes.

Then on February 4, 2012 doctors put a shunt into Ms Quinn's brain to drain extra fluid from her skull. When she came around she shocked them and her family by starting to talk.

Ms Wallace said: 'I walked through the door and she said "Hi Janiece, how are you doing?".

'I felt like I had been hit by a bus, I couldn't believe it.'

But Ms Quinn slipped back into a vegetative state shortly after.

Getting fit: Pauline is going to run a 5K for Neurocare

After four weeks on the high dependency unit surgeons concluded there was little hope of Ms Quinn recovering. But as a final attempt, consultant neurosurgeon Umang Patel put a shunt into Pauline's body to drain the brain fluid again.

Just three days later she stunned her doctors by talking and trying to get out of bed.

Ms Wallace said: 'She had gone from being a person who could comb her hair or brush her teeth, to saying "Get off my bed Janiece, I need to go to the toilet!".

'She came to and she explained to me that she knew she was in hospital. She thought she had been there for a couple of weeks.

'I had to tell her she had been there for nine months. She couldn't believe it!

'It has given her a totally new lease of life. She wakes up every morning, points at herself in the mirror and says 'you are beautiful!'.'

It took Pauline another two months to learn to walk again, but she now enjoys cooking and painting and is training for a 5k run to raise money for Sheffield charity,Neurocare.

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Woman trapped in her own body for nine months after brain haemorrhage makes startling recovery thanks to last ditch surgery